This package presents a generally helpful array of methods to approaching your inner self - the true you. In the company of Norman Vincent Peele, I find it supplementary, but still worthy for the price. Enjoy!

This book is good for beginners -- tells you the ins and outs of SQL. Advanced users can find this book useful also, but some concepts are missing from it. Easy to read, practical.

Caution: Starlet contains much female nudity of the torso and derriere. The images are intended to be provocative, without being in poor taste. The book also contains occasional coarse words. If such things offend you, avoid this book.

If Starlet had a larger page size and a lower price, this would be a five-star book. It contains the writing and photography to warrant a five-star rating.

Starlet's theme is how an aspiring young actress or actor goes about defining herself or himself to attract the attention of Hollywood producers, directors, and casting executives while then going on to grab a mass audience in the theaters.

In the days of the studio system, the studio hired hundreds of such youngsters and tried to build them into stars around a preconceived marketing concept. Today, the youngsters have to do the same thing, but by relying on their own resources. It makes the odds much more difficult to overcome.

Ms. Nancy Ellison's photography from 1970-1995 shows a remarkable ability to capture the uniqueness of her strivers, rather than putting them all into simple molds. Her results seemed best at capturing the subtleties of personality, body type, and acting ability of the subjects when women were involved. But a few of her male photographs are quite remarkable, too.

Ms. Ellison's opening essay on her philosophy is very well done, and explains her work quite well. "To the viewer, the starlet holds this problem, availability, surrender, and finally, possession." "With another woman, I choose to be in collusion with her -- to seduce the world with her beauty." "What has she got that no one else has?" "It is the imagery that creates the desirability of the subject." "Starlet is an homage to all those beautiful creatures who posed for my camera hoping for stardom, and to their youthful dreams."

As fine as her essay is, it is easily outshone by Mr. Paul Theroux's musings about what a starlet is. He begins by recalling his experience as a youngster spotting Marilyn Monroe in Scubba-Hoo! Scubba-Hay! listed in the credits as "girl in rowboat" (which was actually a canoe). From there he describes the Margot Peters character in Vladimir Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark. Mr. Theroux puts up many contradictory, but partially accurate, dictionary definitions. These ideas are contrasted with popular conceptions and how directors think about starlets. Ultimately, he feels that a starlet is many things including "the siren, the waif, the girl with screen potential, the babe, the expressive face, the eloquent [derriere] . . . ."

You will recognize and be interested in many of the photographs in the book. Most of the subjects went on to have noteworthy careers, but there are also unknowns who are probably out of the industry now.

My favorite female images were of Rosanna Arquette, Shari Belafonte, Jamie Lee Curtis, Geena Davis, Molly Ringwald, Jennifer Tilly, Grace Jones, Isabelle Adjani, Kim Bassinger, Catherine Hicks, Isabelle Huppart, Isabella Rosellini, Margot Kidder, Maud Adams, Heather Locklear, Sharon Stone, Glenn Close, and Arielle Dombasle. In terms of acting skill for the camera, Rosanna Arquette, Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppart, Sharon Stone, and Glenn Close will make the biggest impressions on you. These women were all quite young in these photographs (although clearly over 18) so there's a dewiness that you may not have seen before. On the other hand, strong character is also clearly present in some of these women at quite a young age. In others, emotional maturity is evident also.

My favorite male photographs were of Pierce Brosnan (the best in my opinion), Christopher Reeve, River Phoenix, and Nicholas Cage.

The page size for these images should have had an area about 40 percent larger. The details would have reproduced much better if that had been the case.

In many cases, a two page layout has five or six images on it. These images are really too small to do justice to the work.

I would like to mention that the captions were excellent. Ms. Ellison discusses the subject, the issues involved with the shooting, and makes broader observations about starlets in these captions.

For the number of pages in this volume, I thought the price was excessive. The volume felt more like one that should have had a suggested retail price of $27.50 to me.

Despite my quibbles, most people who love to look at beautiful women and handsome men will find this to be an outstanding volume.

I suggest that you take out photographs of yourself at various ages, and look objectively to see what these images tell you about how you represent yourself. In which ones are you playing a role? In which ones are you being yourself? What lessons do you draw from these observations and from seeing Starlet about how you should portray yourself in the future?

Let the beauty of your soul shine through!

just to know about the books and its contents

Introduction gives a short descriptions about all (at that time) available RP systems, unfortunately only text, no pics. But, if you're looking for info on SLA and how to use it, this is a book for you. Stereolithography as a method is clearly described (almost in too detalied level) -how it's done, what happens in the process, materials and all. It's all there. Book also describes various applications based on this process. Good reading if you're interested in SLA, but if you're looking for general info on RP&M, this may be a bit too heavily concentrated on SLA for your needs.

Samuelson's study guide is quite useful only if you have studied both macro and microeconomics. Be sure to understand that this study guide's purpose is to refresh and test your knowledge of the realm of economics on the macro AND micro level. Do not use this study guide to help you on either of the two courses alone. I would recommend this study guide for those students taking courses that combine both macro and micro into a single survey course or for those students who have completed both principles to macro and micro and are now attempting to tackle these courses on the intermediate level. Overall, the study guide comes with an answer key and sufficient coverage of the concentration - not bad. A general warning - don't but this unless you REALLY think you're going to use it - don't think it's going to make you a better student- keep in mind the "better"student must already exist in order for this study guide to be put into actual use. You'll probably be just as well off studying out of your textbook and with friends.

Here is a true rarity: a Tai Chi book that does not have a section devoted to reproducing pictures or drawings of one of the forms. T.T. Liang, like other authors of Chinese origin on this subject, suffered from grave illness and was cured by practicing Tai Chi. This book, edited by one of his students, is a very, very different approach to writing about Tai Chi.

What is interesting about it is the blend of materials presented. This little, unassuming book contains a VERY GOOD translation of the Tai Chi Classics, with a very personal and insightful commentary from Master Liang, along with excerpts from many other Tai Chi songs and tales from China. The chapters are loosely knit, and sometimes while reading the book one gets the feeling that it is just a collection of loose essays on Tai Chi by either a long-time practitioner or a fascinated observer. The style is very personal, and Master Liang intertwines his own ruminations and analyses of the teachings from the ancients in the same text. There are a lot of insights hidden in it, but a casual reader will have trouble finding them. This author wanders off, and doesn't always remember the reader trailing behind him, so one is often left thinking, "did I miss something?"

In all, the book is not bad (it's readable, the translation of the classics is very good, and you can see that the author knows his subject), but it is not excellent either. I'd say it's an average book with highlights that would interest an intermediate to advanced student of Tai Chi.

Many novels of this type focus on technology, or plots to take over the world. This one uses one man's trials following his return from a foriegn prison.

More a Faust type work than a techno-thriller.

I have used this book in my reading classes for graduates. It has become an excellent tool in my classroom as well. I have lent it to several teachers to use when questions concerning phonics or methods arrive. It's an excellent resource book to keep close at hand in the classroom.

To Paul Carus we owe much of the understanding of and enthusiasm for the literary pearl of Eastern philosophy, Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. For that alone, this book is worth having in a library shelf of Tao Te Ching essentials. But better still would be Carus' verbatim translation, which includes the first English ideogram-to-English rendering, from which non-Chinese poets such as Stephen Mitchell and Ursula LeGuin drew their inspiration and practical reference. Though the verbatim translation of Carus has since been wonderfully exceeded by Jonathan Star's lucid and beautifully organized work, Carus still deserves reference from those of us who love Lao Tzu and are always reading and re-reading the Tao Te Ching, in both the Chinese and the many translated permutations of the TTC. However, the Carus verbatim text is probably difficult to find these days, so this work may have to do: when you allow for its flaws and often dated expression (as in referring to the Tao as "Reason"), there are a few gems still of insight and articulation that make Carus' rendering worth owning, but only for the most dedicated of Lao Tzu enthusiasts...